# Namespace alternatives for GitHub Actions runners

Seven alternatives to Namespace for GitHub Actions runners: Avrea, Blacksmith, Depot, WarpBuild, Ubicloud, RunsOn and GitHub, with dated prices and benchmarks.

These providers run your existing GitHub Actions workflows. Compare runner prices, ARM and x86 build times, and what each one charges without a monthly plan.

## Which alternative to pick

- Avrea, if ARM build time matters most. It had the fastest ARM builds in RunsOn’s November benchmark, built the x86 Rust project 5 seconds sooner than Namespace, and has no monthly plan fee.
- Blacksmith, if you want a cache that needs no workflow changes and a low ARM rate, also without a plan fee.
- Depot or WarpBuild, if you want to keep a remote Docker builder.
- RunsOn or WarpBuild, if runners have to run in your own cloud account.
- Ubicloud, if the per-minute rate matters most.
- GitHub’s larger runners, if you’d rather keep CI with one vendor.

## Prices for a 2-vCPU Linux runner

Prices checked 11 November 2026.

Namespace charges $0.004 a minute for a 2-vCPU x86 runner with 8 GB within a paid plan and $0.006 beyond it. Avrea, Blacksmith and WarpBuild charge $0.004 with no plan. ARM prices vary more, partly because the hardware does.

*Namespace alternatives: prices for a 2-vCPU Linux runner*

| Provider | x86 | ARM | Plan fee | Included |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Namespace | $0.004 in plan | $0.004 in plan | $0 or $100 | 25,000 minutes on Team |
| Avrea | $0.004 | $0.012 | None | 3,000 minutes |
| Blacksmith | $0.004 | $0.0025 | None | 3,000 minutes |
| Depot | $0.006 | $0.006 | $20 or $200 | 2,000 or 20,000 minutes |
| WarpBuild | $0.004 | $0.003 | None | $10 credit at signup |
| Ubicloud | $0.00125 | $0.00125 | None | $2.50 credit a month |
| RunsOn | AWS price | AWS price | From €300 a year | 15-day trial |
| GitHub-hosted | $0.006 | $0.005 | GitHub plan | $12 to $300 of usage |

Prices are per minute for a 2-vCPU Linux runner with 8 GB; Blacksmith’s and Ubicloud’s ARM runners have 6 GB. Namespace sets prices in unit minutes, and its $100 Team plan’s 100,000 unit minutes cover 25,000 minutes on 2-vCPU, 8-GB runners. Depot’s plans are $20 for one user and $200 for unlimited users. Ubicloud’s premium x86 runners cost $0.002.

Avrea’s ARM runners are Apple M5 Max machines. Namespace’s generally available ARM runners use AmpereOne and cost the same as its x86 runners; its Linux runners on Apple silicon are in early access on the Team plan and above. WarpBuild also sells Apple silicon ARM runners, from 6 vCPU at $0.08 a minute, and the other ARM runners here use server processors such as Graviton4 and Ampere Altra. The build results below show what that difference does to job time, and a job that finishes sooner bills fewer minutes.

Rates exclude storage, add-ons and enterprise terms. Each provider converts included usage into runner minutes at its own ratio. Avrea’s monthly credit is equivalent to 3,000 minutes on 2-vCPU Linux x86 runners and is shared with other metered usage, including persistent disks and static IPs. Avrea and Depot meter jobs by the second; GitHub rounds each job up to a whole minute. Standard GitHub-hosted runners are free in public repositories.

On macOS, Namespace starts at $0.04 a minute for 4 vCPU within a plan, the lowest entry price here. Avrea’s smallest runner has 8 vCPU and 24 GB on Apple M5 Max for $0.08 a minute; Blacksmith (M4) and WarpBuild (M4 Pro or M5 Pro) charge the same for 6 vCPU, and Depot for 8 vCPU. GitHub’s standard macOS runner is $0.062. Ubicloud and RunsOn have no macOS runners.

Sources: [Namespace pricing](https://namespace.so/pricing), [Avrea pricing](https://avrea.com/pricing), [Blacksmith pricing](https://www.blacksmith.sh/pricing) and [runner specifications](https://docs.blacksmith.sh/blacksmith-runners/overview), [Depot pricing](https://depot.dev/pricing) and [runner types](https://depot.dev/docs/github-actions/runner-types), [WarpBuild pricing](https://www.warpbuild.com/pricing), [Ubicloud pricing](https://www.ubicloud.com/docs/about/pricing), [RunsOn pricing](https://runs-on.com/pricing/), [GitHub runner rates](https://docs.github.com/en/billing/reference/actions-runner-pricing) and [included usage](https://docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-actions).

## Build and cache results at 4 vCPU

RunsOn, a runner vendor that also appears in the table, runs a public benchmark that builds the same projects on every provider’s runners, with its [workflows and method](https://runs-on.com/benchmarks/methodology/) published. The 4 November 2026 run built two projects from a cold start on 4-vCPU, 16-GB runners: the Rust project spotify-player, with its tests and clippy, and PostHog’s production Docker image. The table shows median build times from five runs, and the median time to restore a 4 GB file through `actions/cache` in the 5 November cache test. Depot is not in the benchmark.

*Namespace alternatives: build and cache results at 4 vCPU*

| 4-vCPU runner | Rust, x86 | Rust, ARM | Docker, x86 | Docker, ARM | Cache, x86 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Namespace | 91 s | 340 s | 280 s | 800 s | 18 s |
| Avrea | 86 s | 77 s | 292 s | 286 s | 11 s |
| Blacksmith | 100 s | 243 s | 301 s | 626 s | 12 s |
| WarpBuild | 129 s | 181 s | 447 s | 602 s | 24 s |
| RunsOn | 99 s | 106 s | 403 s | 384 s | 7 s |
| GitHub-hosted | 213 s | 190 s | 773 s | 599 s | 44 s |
| Ubicloud | 139 s | 341 s | 637 s | 821 s | 70 s |

On x86 the two were close: Avrea built the Rust project 5 seconds sooner, and Namespace built the Docker image 12 seconds sooner, the fastest of any runner here. On ARM the gap is wide. Avrea built the Rust project 4.4 times faster than Namespace’s AmpereOne runner and the Docker image 2.8 times faster. Namespace’s Apple silicon Linux runner, in early access, built the two projects in 81 and 309 seconds, against Avrea’s 77 and 286. These builds start without a warm cache, so they measure the machine and its network rather than cache reuse.

Namespace’s and WarpBuild’s cache times use GitHub’s cache service, because their own caches need a different action. RunsOn’s row is its fastest EC2 instance with an EBS or local NVMe disk in each test, and Ubicloud’s is its standard runner. Where a run failed, the median covers the successful runs.

*Data: RunsOn, [benchmarks](https://runs-on.com/benchmarks/) and [cache results](https://runs-on.com/benchmarks/github-actions-cache-performance/), CC BY 4.0. We selected the 4-vCPU rows.*

## The alternatives

### Avrea

We build Avrea. It runs GitHub Actions jobs on dedicated machines: Linux x86, Linux ARM and macOS on Apple M5 Max, and Windows Server 2025. It built the x86 Rust project 5 seconds sooner than Namespace, had the fastest ARM builds in the benchmark, and has no monthly plan fee.

Supported `actions/cache` calls go to Avrea’s cache without workflow changes, with 25 GB per repository shared across Actions, LFS, build and package caches. Integrations for Turborepo, Gradle, Bazel, Nx, Go and sccache let a cache hit skip compilation or tests, and persistent disks keep Docker builder state between jobs for $0.50 per provisioned GB a month. Each job has searchable logs, CPU and memory metrics and SSH, and workflow analytics track failure and flake rates. Avrea AI, in beta, proposes a fix for a failing job and runs your tests on it before opening a pull request.

For teams that use Namespace’s devboxes, Avrea Sandboxes are development environments for engineers and agents on the same infrastructure as the runners, and they can reuse a repository’s CI caches. Avrea is ISO 27001:2022 certified and SOC 2 Type II attested. [Read the full Avrea and Namespace comparison](https://avrea.com/avrea-vs-namespace).

### Blacksmith

Blacksmith runs managed runners with no plan fee and 3,000 free minutes a month, at $0.004 a minute for 2-vCPU x86 and $0.0025 for 2-vCPU ARM. Its Actions cache needs no workflow changes and includes 25 GB per repository at no extra charge. Docker builds run on the runner, with layers kept on a sticky disk through Blacksmith’s own setup and build actions. macOS runs on M4 from 6 vCPU, and jobs run in four regions across the US and Europe. [Avrea vs Blacksmith](https://avrea.com/avrea-vs-blacksmith).

### Depot

Depot pairs its runners with remote Docker builders. `depot build` and `depot/build-push-action` send the build to a remote 16-CPU BuildKit machine with a persistent layer cache, billed at $0.04 a minute after the plan’s 500 or 5,000 included minutes. Its runners charge the same rate for x86 (AMD EPYC) and ARM (Graviton4) and come with a $20 single-user or $200 unlimited-user plan. Depot Cache also serves Bazel, Gradle, Turborepo, Nx and sccache. [Avrea vs Depot](https://avrea.com/avrea-vs-depot).

### WarpBuild

WarpBuild sells runners and remote Docker builders as separate products. Its builders start at 16 vCPU for $0.06 a minute, and it can deploy runners into your own AWS, GCP or Azure account for $0.002 a minute plus the cloud bill. Hosted runners cost $0.004 a minute for 2-vCPU x86, Linux ARM runs on server processors or Apple silicon, and macOS on M4 Pro or M5 Pro. To use WarpBuild’s own cache on hosted runners, you replace `actions/cache` with `WarpBuilds/cache`; storage and operations are billed separately. [Avrea vs WarpBuild](https://avrea.com/avrea-vs-warpbuild).

### Ubicloud

Ubicloud’s managed runners are part of an open-source cloud platform and have the lowest hosted rate here, $0.00125 a minute for a standard 2-vCPU runner on x86 or ARM. Premium x86 runners cost $0.002, and new accounts get them by default. The transparent cache works without workflow changes and includes 30 GB per repository. Jobs run in European data centres by default, and there are no macOS or Windows runners. [Avrea vs Ubicloud](https://avrea.com/avrea-vs-ubicloud).

### RunsOn

RunsOn starts a fresh EC2 instance in your own AWS account for each job, from one CloudFormation stack. You pay AWS for the instances and a small control plane, and RunsOn a flat licence from €300 a year for under 50,000 jobs a month; it is free for non-profit, open-source and personal non-commercial projects. RunsOn’s own calculator puts a 4-vCPU spot instance at $0.0014 a minute in us-east-1, before the licence and control plane. Linux and Windows run on x86, ARM and GPU instances, and macOS jobs stay on GitHub’s runners. You manage the AWS account and its capacity.

### GitHub-hosted runners

Staying on GitHub keeps CI with one vendor and one bill. Standard 2-core Linux runners are free in public repositories and $0.006 a minute in private ones. Larger runners need a Team or Enterprise Cloud plan, are billed in public repositories too, and cost $0.012 a minute for 4-core x86 and $0.008 for 4-core ARM. Each plan includes $12 to $300 of usage a month. [Avrea vs GitHub-hosted runners](https://avrea.com/avrea-vs-github-hosted-runners).

### Self-hosted runners with Actions Runner Controller

Actions Runner Controller runs GitHub’s self-hosted runner on your own Kubernetes cluster. GitHub doesn’t charge for self-hosted runner minutes, so the cost is the cluster and the time it takes to run it: images, autoscaling, cache storage and security updates are yours.

## When staying on Namespace makes sense

Namespace’s x86 runners were among the fastest in the benchmark, and one account covers runners, remote Docker builders, NVMe cache volumes and devboxes. Its macOS runners start at 4 vCPU for $0.04 a minute within a plan, the lowest macOS entry price here. If the Team plan’s included minutes cover most of your usage, the effective x86 rate matches the $0.004 others charge.

Moving means replacing Namespace’s cache volume and remote builder steps with `actions/cache` and the standard Docker actions, and changing each job’s runner label. The first runs elsewhere start with a cold cache.

## Common questions

### Which is the fastest Namespace alternative?

On ARM, Avrea: in RunsOn’s 4 November 2026 run it had the fastest ARM builds of both projects on 4-vCPU runners, ahead of Namespace’s AmpereOne and Apple silicon Linux runners. On x86 the two were close: Avrea built the Rust project 5 seconds sooner and Namespace the Docker image 12 seconds sooner. Depot is not in the benchmark.

### Is Avrea faster than Namespace?

On ARM, yes: 4.4 times faster on the Rust build and 2.8 times faster on the Docker image against Namespace’s AmpereOne runner, and ahead of its Apple silicon Linux runner on both. On x86 the two are close: 86 seconds against Namespace’s 91 on the Rust build, and 292 against 280 on the Docker image.

### What is the cheapest alternative to Namespace?

Per minute, Ubicloud’s standard runners: $0.00125 for 2 vCPU on x86 or ARM. With your own AWS account, RunsOn on spot instances can cost less, plus its annual licence. Avrea, Blacksmith and WarpBuild charge $0.004 for 2-vCPU x86 with no plan fee, the same rate Namespace charges within a paid plan.

### Which Namespace alternatives run in my own cloud account?

RunsOn runs in your AWS account. WarpBuild deploys runners into AWS, GCP or Azure for $0.002 a minute plus your cloud bill. Depot offers deployment into your AWS account on its Business plan. Actions Runner Controller runs on any Kubernetes cluster you operate. Avrea, Blacksmith and Ubicloud are hosted services, as Namespace is; Avrea’s Enterprise plan adds an egress firewall and static IPs for teams that need network controls.

### Which alternatives have macOS runners?

Avrea runs macOS 26 on Apple M5 Max at 8 and 16 vCPU. Blacksmith runs M4 at 6 vCPU, Depot runs macOS 26 on M4 at 8 vCPU, WarpBuild runs M4 Pro or M5 Pro at 6 and 12 vCPU, and GitHub has standard and larger macOS runners. Ubicloud and RunsOn don’t run macOS.

### How do I move a workflow off Namespace?

Change the job’s `runs-on` label to the new provider’s, for example `avrea-ubuntu-latest` for Avrea’s 2-vCPU, 8-GB x86 runner. On Avrea, the console’s migration wizard converts a workflow and opens the pull request for you. Replace Namespace’s cache action with `actions/cache`, which Avrea serves from its own cache without further changes, and remote builder steps with the standard Docker actions. Expect the first runs to rebuild caches from scratch, and compare a cold run, a repeat of the same commit and a typical change before deciding.

## Related reading

- [Avrea vs Namespace](https://avrea.com/avrea-vs-namespace): pricing, benchmarks, caching and environments for coding agents.
- [GitHub Actions runner prices compared](https://avrea.com/github-actions-runner-pricing): every provider’s rates and the cost of one build.
- [Fastest ARM runners for GitHub Actions](https://avrea.com/blog/fastest-arm-github-actions-runners): the ARM build results in detail.
- [All runner comparisons](https://avrea.com/alternatives): the wider provider comparison.

## Try one job on Avrea

Connect a repository with the [setup guide](https://docs.avrea.com/getting-started/), then change one job’s runner label. Run the same commits on both providers and compare duration and cost, including a cold cache.

[Try Avrea](https://console.avrea.com) · [Runner sizes and pricing](https://avrea.com/pricing)